Along with the state officials and law professors who are happy that the Supreme Court this week is reviewing the corruption conviction of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell, add inmate No. 24775-001 at the federal prison in Oakdale, La.

Over the course of 2015, President Barack Obama used the clemency powers of his office to free more than 100 federal prisoners, most of whom were nonviolent offenders who had been sentenced by overly harsh narcotics laws. The releases were, Obama said in late December, “another step forward in upholding our ideals of justice and fairness.” Those “men and women … had served their debt to society,” he said.

The governor of Alabama has partially reversed a decision to close more than 30 government offices that issue driver licenses and photo IDs, following weeks of criticism by civil rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers who say the action would make it harder for some black residents to get the identification needed to vote.

The "No Closings Caravan" began it's journey Thursday across Alabama's poor Black Belt region to protest the closing of 31 satellite driver's license offices after state budget cuts. The journey started in Union Springs before moving on to Tuskegee and hitting three other Black Belt counties later in the afternoon.

The 'decision to cut out ID services to almost all counties with a majority black population is discriminatory and wrong,' says ACLU of Alabama. "Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed," writes columnist John Archibald.

Before being sentenced to seven years in federal prison - for something 113 State Attorneys General and the New York Times said was never a crime in America - I had the honor of delivering a eulogy for my dear friend Colonel Stone Johnson. The story of our friendship is worth taking note of, because it ultimately demonstrates how unjust a judicial system can be.

Dana Siegelman, daughter of former Gov. Don Siegelman, plans to try to talk to President Barack Obama about her father's case on Saturday in Selma. The president is coming to Alabama for the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the voting rights march.

Today behind an invisible curtain, hidden in mounds of legal text, lives an insidious—and systematic—effort to return America to a time when average people, especially people of color, had no Constitutional rights.